Wichita eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1886-1890, 1887-07-01
1ai11& gaale
GRAVELOTTES GRAVES
The SPOT WHERE $4,000 MEN
WERE SLAIN FOR GLORY
brief Description of the Battle F;eId-A
"erman Commanders Blunder-Tbe
Grinding of the nYurderous ,,;tr,r.
ieuses-ihe Land Uttered with Graves.


Grinding of the NIurderous ,1itrai,.
ieuses-fhe Land Uttered with Graves.
The village Of Gravelotte is formed nv
Two lanes OF houses at RIGHT anolas Tbe
one on the main route leads aIono a
plateau Tor some hundreds of wards. then
suddenly descends into rayine which
C,oSses IL, also at right angles, the road
'neu ascending pretty steeply for a quarter
y! Hhle TO the ever famous farm house
oI ot. Hubert. This road and the rayine
vi elener side of it witnessed the bloodiest
hours OF the last war, and it is not easy to
write with composure of them immedi-
ately after one has passed. By the move
ments of the two forces, as every one who
followed the earlier details of the struprle
knows, the Germans were in possession of
the village-that is, were on the French
side OF the battle fieid-and the five diyi-
slons of the French forces, under five COM
manders, were on the German side. with
baza1ne and Metz in their rear. The
French artillery was along the heights OBJ
posIte Gravelotte, and at St Hubert stood
the mItrallleuses, only too successful here,
whatever they may have been at other
times.
SOMEBODY BLUNDERED.
tllc CIiduSSce winch WlQUS from
. the village Of Gravelotte across the ravine,
and up TO the farm house of St Hubert
on the height opposite, Won Zastrow sent
German artillery, infantry and at last
Uhlans straight into the teeth of the
French on the hill, secure in their three
tiers Of rife pits and behind rows of artil-
lery and mitrailleuses-straight at ''the
lightning Of the lips of guns = The order
to advance thus was q blunder, OF at best
a misunderstanding, and the brave Ger
mans who obeyed it fell rank by rank till
the road and the whole ravine were COW
cred with their bodies; then as the rush
became more desperate the men went
down literally by sections. My guide over
the field instinctively lowered his voice as
he spoke of the grinding of the mitrail-
lenses and the moving down of each line
of men as it appeared struggling up from
below. Even next morning Archibald
Forbes found not only of course, the
whole place deep with dead, but German
blood positively in puddles along this
road. The Chlans were sent to cover the
retreat when the failure Of the attack be-
came evident, but Peter Keenan's charge
at Charlottesville was not a more utterly
hopeless effort. The regular tactics of
the Swiss pillcmen of the Sixteenth CEN
tAu HHSh IL was Cltdlls d1itISttOu lildk
the three or four front ranks of the pha-
1anX would fall at the first onset with the
''Landsknechts, and the others march
over their bodies, afford the closest paral,
lei to the advance Of Zastrow's men across
this rayine
An idea of the carnage Of the whole
battle of Aug. IS may be gathered from
the statement that there We're 10000
French and 2fl 900 Germans Including
reserves engaged in it, and that over 49,
GEO French and 90 600 Germans fell there
Lord WolselCy has put on record the state
ment that the proportion OF French to area
was ten and a half men per yard And
all the time this was going on Bazaine lay
miles in the rear with the French imperial
guard, holding it in readiness to re enforce
his left wing, which was in an absolutely
impregnable position, while his right was
slowly and surely being driven in and
round. 'Le cochonv' said my guide. st.
Private, where the conditions were almost
the same, is known as 1.-THE tomb of the
guard, - the Prussian guard alone having
lost that afternoon no fewer than 315 Off
GERS and 2, 7S5 men. When at last, and at
nightfall, the French evacuated st. HUI
bert, out of 700 men who had defended
that particular spot 300 remained. My
guide was one of these; hence his emo
ton.
UTTERED WITH GRAVES.
All this, however, has to be recon-
Structed from memory and imagination.
and it is not until one begins to ascend
the road that leads on from St Hubert
that the actual things before ones eyes
become impressive and indeed almost
awful On each side of the road rich
and highly cultivated country rolls away
for several miles to the horizon Dozens
of plow teams are dotted over it, and the
great curved burrows of which | have
already spoken give it the appearance of a
huge dark brown strand from which the
ocean has gradually receded. But
for the moment one notices neither
plOwmen nor burrows, nor fertile
fields, but only graves The whole
country side, as far as You can see, is
Uttered with them. Little graves, with
small white wooden crosses on them, each
cross bearing its wreath, where some
handfuls of comrades lie; little graves
with n big and generally lanky monu-
ment where some high officer fell, monu-
ments to which no single grave can be
found TO correspond, where regiments
were annihilated, and great embarked
graves with n tumble Of crosses and
WreathS upon them, Where q hundred or a
couple of hundred, or even five hundred
rank and file lie closer together even than
they stood in those dreadful August days.
In many of the graves French and Ger
man soldiers lay side by side, the inscrip-
ton doing homage to the courage of both
alike [ did not notice any Of these in
French. but probably this was because
the place was German ground. \ few
wards from us, well into a plowed field, is a
square mound of earth, with its cross,
which covers almost all of what was once
n dashing German regiment The plow-
man on reaching it has guided his share
close round the edge, then on reaching it
n second time. round that again and so
on. until now. when he is twenty burrows
away, the grave lies in the middle of con-
centric circles of burrows, which lie about
it like the rings round a stone dropped
into a POOL In few months the grave
will be q little island in the middle of q
waving sea of oats. Rich crops grow IN
these burrows of the sword.-Cor. Pal
Mall Gazette.
From His Beloved.
~.